Centre asks Bihar to speed up Aadhaar cards linkage with ration cards

October 7, 2016, 11:57 PM IST

Patna: Expressing concern over poor linkage of Aadhaar cards with ration cards in Bihar, Union Minister Ram Vilas Paswan on Friday asked the state government to complete the process by December-January in order to check corruption in the public distribution system.

The Union Minister for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, also asked the Nitish Kumar government to install Point of Sale (POS) machines in all the PDS centres in the state by December.

“There is no doubt that we (Bihar) are lagging behind other states vis-a-vis linking of Aadhaar to ration cards and installation of POS machines. But Deepak ji (Bihar government Food and Consumer Protection Department Principal Secretary) has given assurance that both work would be completed at the earliest. The efforts would help in checking corruption in PDS,” Paswan said.

“The principal secretary must set a target of linking 70 to 80 per cent of Aadhaar to ration cards by December besides installing POS machines at the PDS centres within the same time limit.

If we are able to link Aadhaar to ration cards, at least 25 per cent of ration cards would be detected as fake ones,” he told reporters.

Out of 1.54 crore ration cards in Bihar, only 20,000 cards have been linked with Aadhaar so far which constitutes 0.13 per cent, Paswan said, adding that the national percentage of Aadhaar linkage with ration cards stands at 66.

There are states like Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and union territory Chandigarh, which have achieved cent per cent linking of Aadhaar to ration cards, he added.